In the winter of 2026, two Estonian citizens independently crossed into Russia within a week of each other, walking across a frozen lake. Both wanted to seek international protection. One believed the Estonian state was subjecting people with special needs to abuse and covering it up. The other did not speak Estonian — despite having lived in the country his entire life — and struggled to find work. Both ended up in a Russian pretrial detention facility, sent there on criminal charges of illegally crossing the border. Mediazona and the Estonian newspaper Eesti Ekspress have the details.

At 10:30 p.m. on January 25, 2026, Rando, 42, walked out onto the ice of Lake Teploe — part of the Peipus-Pskov lake system. By around 9 a.m. the following day, surveillance cameras operated by Estonia’s Police and Border Guard Board had captured him crossing into Russia. He photographed a border marker and posted the image on Facebook. He was detained fewer than 100 meters inside Russian territory.

The independent Russian news outlet Mediazona describes Rando as a man consumed by a conspiracy theory holding that people with special needs in Estonia were being sexually abused while the state covered it up. He made videos on the subject, claiming that Estonia’s municipalities and social services were controlled by “rats” who robbed the people in their care. “Yes, he had this obsession. It was all he talked about,” a close friend of the Estonian confirmed.

Relatives of Rando who spoke with the newspaper Eesti Ekspress describe him as someone who “was born with special needs” — without specifying what that means. They say he suffered a serious trauma in childhood that worsened his condition, and that he was later hospitalized in a psychiatric facility several times, once for more than two years in a row.

A nursing home in the city of Valga was one of Rando’s main targets. He claimed women there were being systematically raped. His rhetoric, Mediazona writes, began to take on pro-Russian overtones. He promised that when “the Russians come,” he would hand over evidence of crimes committed by “the Estonian race,” and said he intended to go to Russia. Police investigated but found no evidence of the crimes he described.

Rando also contacted Estonian television journalists about the same subject, and in January a show featuring him aired. He introduced himself to the host as a “hardened criminal.” Mediazona found that he did in fact have a criminal record: between 2007 and 2012 he was convicted several times for drunken brawls, theft, and robbery.

On January 7, Rando burst into the Valga city administration building. Police arrived and asked him to leave. He did, declaring that he was “Russian by nationality” and prepared to seek justice in Russia. Police flagged Rando’s condition to municipal officials, but what happened next is unclear. About two weeks later, he was in Russia.

In the early hours of February 1, a week after that, a second Estonian crossed into Russia on foot across the ice in a similar manner — Danil, 25. Russian border guards found tracks, and at noon the following day notified the Estonian side that an Estonian citizen had crossed the border without documents. Danil was detained shortly afterward.

Danil’s mother says he took no belongings or documents — his phone and passport were left on the table at home. Danil was born and had lived his entire life in Estonia but did not speak Estonian, which made it hard for him to find work, she said. After losing his last job, he began talking about moving to Russia. She believes her son had mental health problems compounded by alcohol, “but in reality nobody could see what was going on in his head.”

Neither Rando nor Danil contacted the Estonian embassy for help. According to Estonia’s Police and Border Guard Board, both instead asked Russia for international protection. The Gdov District Court of the Pskov Region nonetheless remanded both men in custody on charges of illegally crossing the border, and they were placed in Pskov’s Pretrial Detention Center No. 1.

Danil’s mother learned of her son’s arrest from journalists. He did not respond to letters from Mediazona. A cellmate replied on Rando’s behalf — Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service does not allow correspondence in foreign languages — writing that the Estonian had been assigned a state defense attorney and passing along a request to send “a carton of cigarettes, tea, sugar, matches, and coffee” and to contact people he knew so they could “put money in his pretrial detention center account.”

Svetlana Gannushkina, founder of the Civic Assistance Committee, which helps refugees and migrants, believes that if the Estonians did in fact request asylum in Russia, the opening of criminal proceedings against them violates Article 31 of the 1951 Refugee Convention. Foreigners convicted of illegally crossing the border typically face a short prison term or a fine, followed by deportation, she says.

Estonia’s Foreign Ministry notes that Estonian citizens very rarely seek asylum in Russia, and that the exact number of such cases cannot be determined because the procedure does not require notifying the country of origin. On April 21, the ministry said that Rando, who had sought asylum in Russia, had nonetheless reached out to Estonian diplomats for help. Whether Danil had done the same remained unknown.